


Between Thy Rosed Lips

by Lauralot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dehydration, HYDRA Trash Party, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Medical Torture, Muteness, Mutilation, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 08:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5619853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As long as Bucky Barnes talks back, HYDRA can't break his spirit.</p><p>Too bad they have ways of fixing that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Thy Rosed Lips

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1634.html?thread=2967650#cmt2967650) on the Hydra Trash meme: _Bucky is so snarky when they first capture him, Hydra decides to cut his vocal chords. Everybody is in favor of the decision: they don't have to put up with any backtalk/threats, and there's a lot less screaming._
> 
> _+Hydra using this as another amusing dehumanization. The WS screams sound like he's gasping ie. "oh, you're enjoying this aren't you?"_
> 
> _++Any aftermath viewing of this. How does Steve take the news? How does Bucky handle yet another obstacle in his recovery?_

Sergeant Barnes made obscenity into an art form.

It was not, perhaps, a rare talent in one’s native tongue. Any child with a sense of bravado and a crude vocabulary could master it. But this child was capable of spouting vulgarities in both German and Russian as well as his native English, or combining the three in an odd pidgin mix of profanity. He _sculpted_ his taunts, chiseled them down to the sharpest edges, and then peppered every inch of his masterwork with curses. He had a raw talent most artists could only dream of.

Not for the first time, and with tension aching behind his eyes, Zola wondered if the young man realized his rapid mastery of Russian was the gift of Zola’s serums. Not that Barnes would be grateful even if he could comprehend.

He made his way to the American’s cell, casting a disdainful glare at the orderly scurrying down the hall. Barnes was only one man: stubborn, strong, but human. He’d been chained and beaten in violent displays Zola could not bring himself to watch. The only weapon left was his mouth, and the way he managed to continually best and dishearten his captors with that was irritating, to say the least.

Sergeant Barnes was still shouting after the retreating orderly.

“—taken _shits_ bigger than your dick, Kraut—”

His accent was appalling.

“—pity the girl who ends up riding your sorry, shriveled excuse for a cock, motherfucking—”

Who had taught him those words?

Barnes gave a wide, bloodied smile as Zola stepped into the cell. “ _Mein Führer_!” he exclaimed, eyes round and glittering. “To what do I owe the honor of your appearance?” Then Barnes bent, in the best attempt at a mocking bow that he could manage with his restraints. Zola was gratified to hear his pained intake of breath as he moved.

“Are you uncomfortable, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Oh.” A shrug, and a poorly hidden grimace. “The room and board’s just dandy, but the staff leaves a lot to be desired.”

“Have you considered that compliance would improve your accommodations?”

“Have you considered licking my asshole?” Barnes countered.

Zola made a point of sighing deeply. Whatever happened to the boy strapped to his examination table, murmuring his serial number and quietly sobbing to himself? He had been so much more pleasant then.

“Hey,” Barnes says. “You had the food here? It’d be an improvement.”

He took a seat. Well out of reach of Barnes’s prosthetic arm, of course. Everyone involved in the project had learned that lesson the very day it was grafted it. The brat had been ungrateful for that gift as well. “Sergeant Barnes, do you realize that you owe me your life?”

“Still have the receipt? I’d like to return it.”

“It was my work that kept you alive when Captain Rogers abandoned you in the Alps. And it is my research that will allow you to live without being pitied as a cripple.”

“Golly.” Barnes looked around the cell. “When you put it that way, I’m so grateful to be stuck in this shithole. I should send you a card.”

“Your sarcasm does not change the facts, Sergeant Barnes.” Zola wiped a speck from his glasses before he continued. “You ought to be willing to repay my generosity. And you must have the wits to look beyond yourself and realize that our work will change the world. Not Germany. Not Switzerland. The world. Surely that is a worthy cause?”

“I’ve got some experience with worthy causes.” Barnes settles back as best he can in his restraints. “In my experience, they don’t involve trying to torture captives with a cock up their ass. I’ve had hemorrhoids bigger than that guy’s dick, by the way. Let him know I said so.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

There was a spark of hunger in the man’s eyes. He’d been starved of information about the outside world ever since they recovered him. “Enlighten me, Frankenstein.”

“It is 1952, Sergeant Barnes.” Zola paused to let the information sink in. “You lost several years in cryostasis as we decided how best to curb your combative spirit. Your allies have not come for you. They will not come for you. What is there to gain by continuing to fight us?”

Barnes was silent for a long moment, mouth working, eyes wet.

“Sergeant Barnes?”

“Satisfaction.” Barnes met his gaze, his voice steady.

“You are a willful child.” Zola stood. “But as with a wild horse, you will be broken.”

“Better find some bigger cocks for that.”

Barnes’s giggling echoed after Zola down the hall.

*

Bucky opened his eyes and looked up at himself.

He was on the ceiling, on his back. The light was dim, but he could make out a sheet covering most of his body. He tried to reach out to the other Bucky, but his arms wouldn’t move. That should have seemed worrying, but his thoughts were sluggish, muddled. A sheet. Maybe he ought to be sleeping. He didn’t need to move as he slept.

Maybe he was the one on the ceiling, looking down at himself. Maybe he’d died. It seemed anticlimactic, kicking it in his sleep after all he’d survived, but oh well. Zola would be pissed. There was that.

He hoped death didn’t consist of staring down—up?—at himself as he decayed. Maybe he could find Steve, and they could haunt Zola and his squid-Nazis, give them hell until they died of fright. Steve was probably dead by now. It was so hard for him to breathe in the cold, and it was so damn cold in this hellhole...

But Steve wasn’t here.

And he didn’t have trouble breathing anymore. Bucky tried to shake his head, but even that wouldn’t move. His mind felt thick as molasses. Molasses. When was the last time he had that?

There was a light, sudden and blinding. Bucky’s eyes snapped shut. Lights...they meant Heaven, right? Or Christmas, but probably Heaven. Was he allowed in Heaven after all the shit he’d said lately? Shit. He shouldn’t think things like ‘shit he’d said lately’ if he wanted to make a case for why God should cut him some fucking slack. And he shouldn’t think ‘fucking’ either. Shit.

The light wasn’t stabbing through Bucky’s eyelids so badly anymore. It must have moved. He felt a soft touch, a hand on his cheek. “Sergeant Barnes.”

Zola. When he looked, he wasn’t staring back at himself anymore, but at those beady little eyes behind glasses. He could catch a glimpse of his reflection in the lenses, and he wondered if Zola was reflected in his own eyes, and back and forth forever and ever and—

“The procedure has already started,” Zola said, but he couldn’t have said it. He had no mouth. The space where it had once been was replaced by fabric. Or maybe paper. Something thin, something that rustled with each syllable. Something that was pale powder blue.

Bucky always liked the color blue.

“Direct your attention to the mirror, please,” Zola said without a mouth, and he stepped aside. The light came back, but it didn’t hurt so badly. He was on the ceiling again. So was Zola, though only the top of his head was visible. Bucky couldn’t see a mirror.

He couldn’t remember how the nuns back home said Heaven would look, but he was pretty sure Zola wouldn’t be there.

There was something in Bucky’s mouth, something like a snake holding his jaws open, forcing itself down his throat. He couldn’t feel it. He should feel the snake. He knew from recent experience that his gag reflex was pretty damn sensitive.

The snake tasted like plastic.

“I gave you every opportunity to cooperate with our work,” Zola said. The Zola on the ceiling, all covered in that powder blue something, pressed a sponge to the throat of the other Bucky. Dark liquid spilled out, staining the pale skin brown. Bucky’s own throat was cold. “But you chose to hamper any progress with your fighting and smart remarks.”

 _They’re the only smart thing in this place,_ Bucky thought. He couldn’t speak around the snake.

“Do not be afraid,” Zola continued. “You will feel no pain during the procedure. This is not sympathy, mind you. To allow you to suffer would distract you from the point of this lesson.”

On the ceiling, the other Zola replaced the sponge and laid a scalpel against the other Bucky’s throat.

The skin split like paper. Just peeled back like the wrapping around a present. Christmas again. Bucky was the gift. He wanted to laugh, but no one could laugh with a snake in their throat. Bucky had seen men impaled on bayonets before. There was always an awful sound, and such effort to wrench the weapon back out. But the other Bucky unfolded like a package.

Was the other Bucky made of paper? A doll, like his sisters used to dress up? Was this a puppet show?

Bucky doubted he’d earned a puppet show.

“And this is indeed a object lesson, Sergeant Barnes,” Zola continued. Someone else was on the ceiling now, mopping at the red that came spilling from the paper Bucky’s throat as the paper Zola worked. It looked wet. They shouldn’t let their doll get wet; he’d dissolve. “Your body is my experiment, as you will learn. You do not own it, and I can do with it as I please.”

The paper Bucky’s throat was pinned open. But pins belonged in fabric, not paper. And presents didn’t bleed. The snake in the paper Bucky’s mouth went all the way down his throat, out of sight.

 _Longer than that Kraut’s dick,_ Bucky thought. The snake wouldn’t let him giggle.

The paper Zola knocked the snake to one side. In Bucky’s throat, something shifted. The paper Zola held something like tweezers, and he grabbed a flap of wet tissue— _tissue paper, ha_ —in them.

“The vocal cords can be cut out, of course,” Zola said. “But it is troublesome to do so. Much like the epiglottis, the vocal cords seal off the trachea during the process of swallowing. And there is no use in a weapon that chokes itself eating.”

Vocal cords. Bucky had always imagined them like guitar strings, only thicker. He didn’t see any strings in the paper Bucky’s throat.

“Scarring the cords, however, achieves a similar silencing effect. You see, Sergeant Barnes, the voice is produced when the cords vibrate. If the scar tissue is thick enough, the cords can no longer reverberate, and no sound can be formed.”

The scalpel was scraping at the tissue paper, over and over. Blood poured out, spilling onto the snake before the other set of paper hands used more sponges to mop it up.

This was the strangest Christmas ever.

*

In the second grade, Bucky had his tonsils out.

There’d been a damn near epidemic of strep throat in his building. It started with the Robbins boy in the apartment below theirs. Then one of the girls next door to him had caught it, and then on and on until Rebecca came home from school running a fever. And despite his mother’s insistence that everyone wash their hands and his father barking at them not to go near Rebecca, one by one, Bucky and his remaining sisters all came down with strep.

Bucky was the only one who refused to eat because of pain. Whose entire mouth broke out in spots. The medicine didn’t seem to touch it, and his tonsils grew so swollen that even a bowl of chicken broth made him gag and choke.

He remembered the nurse settling the ether mask over his face, remembered his heart racing before he passed out because it had felt more than ever like choking then. He remembered Steve coming to visit, telling him that he wasn’t the one who was supposed to get sick. Most of all, he remembered pain afterward, as if he was scraping his throat raw every time he spoke or ate.

This was worse.

Bucky woke with the taste of copper in his mouth, a raw and tacky feeling in his throat. There were sutures itching on his neck, and an ache just above his collar bones, one that seemed to deepen with every breath.

He remembered the reflection. The scalpel.

When he tried to speak, it was like shards of glass scraping in his throat.

When he tried to scream, the shards were hammered deeper in.

There was a soft laugh as the door opened. Zola. Bucky tried to growl and then tried to shriek, jerking in his restraints.

“If you continue to fight,” Zola said, smirking, “I will cut you open again and again. I will replace your body piece by piece until you learn to obey. But I believe you are not such a slow learner.”

Bucky could only glare.

“Silence suits you, Sergeant Barnes.”

Zola held a file in his hands. He opened it, thumbing through the pages inside. “Regarding your allies, there is something I have waited for years to show you. My colleagues wanted to reveal this information as soon as you woke, but I knew that the impact would be greater if I waited for your lowest moment. Look.”

Bucky shut his eyes. He refused to see photos of the Commandos captured. Mutilated. Refused to see Agent Carter riddled with bullet holes, or Colonel Phillips hanged.

“Open your eyes, Sergeant Barnes, or I will staple them open."

Bucky looked.

Newspapers. Two of them, yellowed with age. The first read **CAPTAIN AMERICA CRASHES IN ARCTIC** , and below that, **Stark leads search party, hopes low**. The second: **STARK RETURNS EMPTY-HANDED, Captain America declared dead.**

Each newspaper was dated from 1945.

Bucky sobbed into his hands. He was screaming, howling at the top of his lungs, but all that came out was a faint, ragged _hahh_.

It went well with Zola’s laughter.

*

The asset’s throat ached.

The canteen hanging from his tac-belt was empty. It had been empty within an hour of their arrival that morning, and now, just past noon, the desert sun blazed down on their heads. Sweat soaked the asset’s hair and neck. The air he breathed through the mask was stifling.

“ _Hahh_ ,” the asset tried.

Commander Rumlow did not hear the asset. He stared through his binoculars, scanning the horizon. The targets were not where the briefing said that they would be.

The asset wanted to tug on Rumlow’s sleeve. He wanted to take the empty canteen and throw it at the commander. But he was not allowed to touch his superiors without permission. He was not allowed to throw things. And he was absolutely not allowed to let go of his rifle and move from his ordered position.

“ _Hahh_ ,” the asset said, and no one looked at him.

A hour later, and the asset could not even do that. His throat seemed to stick to itself, and he did not understand how air could pass through. He had stopped sweating. There was nothing else to come out.

Rumlow shoved his radio into his pocket, mopping at his forehead as he settled on the sand. “They must have got word we were sniffing around,” he said. “Orders are to make direct approach and look for any sign of— _Fucking Christ_!”

Still swearing, Rumlow pulled away, almost falling over. He was cradling his hand to his chest, and the skin on it looked pink and shining. He had burned himself on the asset’s arm.

The asset went very still, suddenly cold. The asset was not allowed to hurt field commanders without direct orders from the Director.

“Boss?” Murphy raced to Rumlow’s side. “What happened?”

“You could make a fucking omelet on the Soldier, that’s what happened,” Rumlow snapped. He leaned toward the asset, eyes narrowed. “Jesus. Take off the mask, Soldier.”

The asset ripped the mask away, gasping for breath.

“We’re damn lucky he hasn’t died of heat stroke or short-circuited his arm,” Rumlow said. “He needs to get back to the shelter, now, so he won’t be fucking dead when we need him.”

The asset did not move. He shut his eyes, hoping that Rumlow would order Murphy to lead him to the shelter. Or Rollins. Anyone but—

“Harmon, you take the Soldier back,” Rumlow said. “You’ll only fuck up any evidence they left at their camp anyway. And give him your canteen. Soldier, follow Harmon.”

The asset’s stomach sank. He took the canteen with a trembling hand. The asset did not want to follow Harmon. He did not like Harmon: the way the man’s eyes lingered on the asset during briefings, the way he found excuses to be alone in a room with him. The way he stroked the asset’s hair and said that the noises the asset made when he fucked him were gasps of pleasure, not muted screams.

The asset drank slowly, trying not to vomit.

Harmon grabbed his flesh wrist when they reached the shelter. “My canteen’s empty now,” he said, as though he couldn’t refill it. “You owe me.”

The asset tried to step away.

“Commander Rumlow told you to listen to me.”

When Agent Rollins stepped into the shelter, the asset was still wiping away the come on his thighs. “For fuck’s sake, Harmon,” he said. “Do you have a death wish?”

Harmon only shrugged. “He didn’t say no.”

*

The mask fell to the pavement, rolling as the Winter Soldier stood up.

He turned, and the face staring back at Steve belonged to a ghost after all. One Steve had never expected to see again.

“Bucky?” he asked, numb.

The Winter Soldier hesitated before he opened his mouth.

For a second, there was only black. The space that should have been occupied by teeth and tongue was just an empty void.

Then the blood gushed forth.

It poured from Bucky’s lips like a broken faucet, coating his chin and chest with red before pooling at his feet. The blood bubbled out although Bucky’s hands clamped at his throat as if to stem it. It flooded the street like a river, soaking into Steve’s shoes and staining his pants. The air reeked of copper, and Steve was nauseous, head spinning.

The street was silent save for Steve’s pounding heart and the splatter of blood from Bucky’s lips. Bucky was screaming, but it was silent. Steve could only tell from the look in his eyes—

Steve bolted up in the bed, hands flying to his mouth to stifle his gasp.

The same dream. Every night, the same dream.

He scrambled out of the bed, heading toward the shower. He needed to wake himself up fully. He couldn’t risk flinching at Bucky if Bucky caught him right after a nightmare.

But Bucky’s door was still shut, the familiar note stuck to the wood.

**NO**

The Post-It notes were Steve’s idea. The apartment was littered with them now. On Bucky’s toiletries:

**NO**

On Bucky’s favorite foods in the pantry and fridge:

**NO**

On the spine of each book that Bucky had decided to read:

**NO!**

**NO!!**

**NO!!!**

Steve wasn’t sure when Bucky had remembered exclamation marks. He chose to view it as progress.

The first month after Steve and Sam had tracked down Bucky, he thought his friend’s silence was due to trauma. Bucky didn’t speak. He also flinched whenever anyone moved toward him unexpectedly and insisted on sleeping on the floor next to his bed instead of in it. Things would get better. Bucky would get better. He’d start to talk and he’d see therapists and he would heal.

Steve just had to make a safe, consistent environment for him until he was ready to take those steps.

And things had seemed better, little by little. Bucky had stopped stockpiling weapons. At least, he hadn’t added any more to the stash that Steve knew he kept in his dresser. Occasionally, he was able to sleep through the night. And Steve was even able to coax him out of his bedroom and in front of the TV.

When they watched _Snow White_ together—“You’ve seen this one before, Buck, we went to the theater when it came out”—Bucky had even smiled at the animals tidying up the house.

After that, they started working their way through the whole Disney animated canon whenever Bucky was willing to leave his room. It was a nice, safe routine for Bucky, and Steve, having always been a fan of animation, finally had the chance to catch up on all the movies he’d missed. Bucky went from leaving his room once a week to twice a week, and then every other day, until Steve could lure him out daily for at least the length of a movie and usually dinner as well. Bucky started to smile more frequently at the plots. Maybe one day, he’d laugh.

Then they got to _The Little Mermaid_ , and all hell broke loose.

The sea witch was using magic to literally rip out the mermaid’s voice, and then she wasn’t, because a metal fist had shattered the TV screen.

Bucky had already collapsed on the floor before Steve could reach him, tearing at his hair as he rolled around in the shards of glass. Tears were pouring down his face, mouth open and contorting. He hadn’t made any sound.

“What’s wrong?” Steve had begged, trying to stop him from clawing at himself. “Bucky, _please_. Tell me what’s wrong!”

It was a quarter of an hour before Steve realized that Bucky’s chest was heaving because he was screaming, not gasping. It was just that the only sound he could make was so faint. It took another handful of minutes before Steve could read his lips. _Can’t. Can’t can’t can’t can’t._

It wasn’t that Bucky wouldn’t speak. It was that HYDRA had removed the ability.

Steve still didn’t know how they did it. Bucky refused to see doctors. He wouldn’t let Sam into his room either, leaving Steve with nothing but speculation and panic. Bucky could make a faint amount of noise, so that meant his vocal cords had to be there. Was it damage to them that was silencing him, or had the chair affected the areas of his brain that controlled speech? Was the damage permanent, or did it have to be repeated to stay effective? Could he heal over time?

If his voice was healing, Steve hadn’t heard it. Other than runs to the bathroom and kitchen in the middle of the night, Bucky refused to leave his bedroom ever since the mermaid incident. Occasionally new Post-It notes would appear, and a set of books Sam had brought about ASL vanished from the coffee table, but Steve hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of Bucky in weeks.

“Just be there for him,” Sam had said during one of their morning runs, a week ago now.

“He literally won’t let me in,” Steve had said. “I don’t know what he needs.”

“He knows you’re there. You’d be surprised how much just knowing you’re not alone can do.”

 _Yeah, right,_ Steve couldn’t help but think, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. Bucky was probably hiding from _Steve_ as much as he was hiding from his past. What if he thought Steve knew all along, and the movies were just a cruel trick to taunt him?

What if he thought that Steve considered him broken?

There was a sound from the hallway, and Steve’s heart seemed to stop. Holding his breath, hardly daring to hope, Steve turned slowly. There was a blue eye framed by lank, filthy hair watching him from the edge of the doorframe.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said, as casually as he could. “You want some breakfast?”

A set of spiral bound note cards began to inch its way into sight. Steve had given it to Bucky along with the Post-It notes, hoping to create a convenient way for Bucky to have common responses with him at all times. But Bucky had only ever opened it to one card: the one that he was displaying now.

**NO!**

The exclamation mark was new.

“Okay,” Steve said. “I’m going to go on a run with Sam. If you’re hungry when I get back, I can make something then. Do you want to come with me?”

A metal finger tapped the card. **NO!**

“Okay,” Steve said. “I guess I’ll head out then.”

The eye looked away, the back, then away again. What little Steve could see of Bucky tensed, and then he took a jerky step so that his body was fully in the doorway.

He didn’t seem to have bathed or brushed his hair since Steve cleaned him up after their last movie night. Nor had he changed clothes. His hair was a greasy mess and his skin not much better. Steve could smell him from across the room.

Bucky held up his hands, and he signed. YOU COME BACK.

Steve stared. “Bucky?”

Again, YOU COME BACK. Steve had been studying ASL online just in case Bucky ever came out of his room again. He’d also signed up for a local class that hadn’t started yet.

In ASL, or at least in Steve’s understanding of it, questions were indicated with a raise of the eyebrows. But Bucky’s face never changed save for the rare smile. He wasn’t sure if Bucky was asking or giving an order.

No. No, he was sure. He could just see a faint sliver of Bucky’s front teeth worrying at his lower lip. He was asking. He wanted to be sure that Steve would return.

Bucky was still communicating. Steve just had to learn to read him.

He didn’t hug him. He didn’t assure him that he would always come back. Instead, as Bucky had, he signed. “Yes,” he said as he did. “I’ll come back.”

Bucky didn’t smile, but he did stay out of his bedroom, watching as Steve left.

For the first time in weeks, Steve didn’t dream of blood that night.

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this fic is taken from Marcus's monologue in Act II, Scene IV of Shakespeare's _Titus Andronicus_ :
> 
> _...Why dost not speak to me?_   
>  _Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,_   
>  _Like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind,_   
>  _Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,_   
>  _Coming and going with thy honey breath..._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Between Thy Rosed Lips [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6319540) by [abbeyjewel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbeyjewel/pseuds/abbeyjewel)




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